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Language Arts Parts of Speech Overview: There are eight parts of speech in our language: noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb, conjunction, preposition & interjection. Think of a part of speech as the way that a word is used. Some words name things while others describe things. Some words are used as substitutes for other words, while some words help us form our sentences. I’m going to simplify things just a bit here. I’m going to get rid of one part of speech because it’s rare and, in my opinion, pretty much useless for our purposes. I’m also going to combine two parts of speech into one because they basically do the same thing. Since I am not the absolute authority in grammar (not yet, anyway), I should still point out these to you since you will be hearing these terms from other teachers and you’ll see them used on things like standardized tests. Interjection – an interjection is simply a word that expresses some emotion (i.e. Ouch!). There, I went over it and you know it, so let’s forget about it. Adjective & Adverb – I’m going to combine these two into one part of speech: modifier (see below). To make the distinction here, adjectives modify nouns and pronouns, while adverbs modify verbs, adjectives and other adverbs. One more thing you need to know…you’ll see the word phrase pop up in the definitions that are listed below. You need to know that that means, too. Phrase – a group of words that is not a sentence, but the words act together as one And now, my parts of speech and their definitions: Noun – a word that labels some physical/abstract thing Pronoun – a word that takes the place of a noun Verb – a word or phrase that labels an action or “state of being” Modifier – a word that gives information about another word in a sentence (both adjectives and adverbs are modifiers – adjectives modify nouns and pronouns, while adverbs modify verbs, adjectives and other adverbs) Conjunction – a word or phrase that combines two parts of a sentence Preposition – a word or phrase that shows the relationship between two other words in a sentence